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How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

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Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#111

Post by Culonavirus »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #105
Culonavirus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker's wife's friend is an attorney. So he's "his family's attorney" now, because of course he is. My landlord is a dentist, so he's my dentist now, because of course he is... That's how it mostly works... I guess :P

The only time I've ever needed a lawyer was for a small side business I had at the time. One of our customers had an unpaid invoice that was past 90 days, and they were not responding to phone calls. Happily, my business partner's brother was a lawyer and she asked him to send out a dunning letter. We had the money within days :-)

Yea, they're a useful bunch, especially if you know one. Back when I worked for an e-commerce site, we were deciding if we're gonna implement package splitting CoD (cash on delivery) for multi-package orders, or if we're gonna just slap the entire sum on the first package (this seems like an easy enough job, but when you have many shipping service APIs you have to work with and you have automated CoD back-reporting that goes into your invoicing, it becomes annoying). We did the easier thing and just sent a pre-drafted dunning letter to people who took the CoD-less packages for free and did not pay for the first one with CoD. Worked like a charm.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#112

Post by bokohut »

JohnFen wrote: post #17

This is a great writeup. I am not a lawyer, but I've received several C&Ds for various things over the decades. The first one scared me to death. The second and subsequent ones did not, because I understood what they were: just the company saying "I don't like what you're doing". When I receive a C&D, the first thing I do is talk to my attorney and go over what the C&D is complaining about. If I think I'm doing somet…

Multiple C&D recipient here as well which upon receiving the first, as some commenters have shared, I too may have needed an underwear change while reading the legal verbiage. However as with many things in life though once you get through the initial experience the latter experiences only get easier. My personal take is I must be doing something of value if other’s lawyers are writing me threatening letters. IANAL so YMMV

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#113

Post by dheera »

JohnFen wrote: post #17

This is a great writeup. I am not a lawyer, but I've received several C&Ds for various things over the decades. The first one scared me to death. The second and subsequent ones did not, because I understood what they were: just the company saying "I don't like what you're doing". When I receive a C&D, the first thing I do is talk to my attorney and go over what the C&D is complaining about. If I think I'm doing somet…

It's weird to me that big tech hasn't thought about offering a financial reward with C&D's.

"We will pay you $10000 if you C&D" seems like pennies to them, much less than the cost of legal fees, a nice amount of cash for a personal project that hasn't monetized yet.

Or a job

"We will give you a job offer to work on X if you C&D your own work on X"

also seems like a great strategy. If someone has already demonstrated enough talent to be a threat to your company, it seems like it would make full sense to try to hire them.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#115

Post by person23 »

bokohut wrote: post #112
JohnFen wrote: post #17

This is a great writeup. I am not a lawyer, but I've received several C&Ds for various things over the decades. The first one scared me to death. The second and subsequent ones did not, because I understood what they were: just the company saying "I don't like what you're doing". When I receive a C&D, the first thing I do is talk to my attorney and go over what the C&D is complaining about. If I think I'm doing somet…

Multiple C&D recipient here as well which upon receiving the first, as some commenters have shared, I too may have needed an underwear change while reading the legal verbiage. However as with many things in life though once you get through the initial experience the latter experiences only get easier. My personal take is I must be doing something of value if other’s lawyers are writing me threatening letters. IANAL s…

>once you get through the initial experience the latter experiences only get easier.

Just for clarification, do you mean soiling your underwear or dealing with a C&D?

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#116

Post by bluefirebrand »

dheera wrote: post #113
JohnFen wrote: post #17

This is a great writeup. I am not a lawyer, but I've received several C&Ds for various things over the decades. The first one scared me to death. The second and subsequent ones did not, because I understood what they were: just the company saying "I don't like what you're doing". When I receive a C&D, the first thing I do is talk to my attorney and go over what the C&D is complaining about. If I think I'm doing somet…

It's weird to me that big tech hasn't thought about offering a financial reward with C&D's. "We will pay you $10000 if you C&D" seems like pennies to them, much less than the cost of legal fees, a nice amount of cash for a personal project that hasn't monetized yet. Or a job "We will give you a job offer to work on X if you C&D your own work on X" also seems like a great strategy. If someone has already demonstrated…

> Or a job. "We will give you a job offer to work on X if you C&D your own work on X

I'm honestly surprised this doesn't happen more in the gaming industry with companies buying big name mods and hiring the mod writers.

I know a lot of mod writers would probably be opposed because they actually just want to make free stuff, but some would probably launch careers off of it.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#117

Post by KieranMac »

JohnFen wrote: post #57
mysterydip wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate that. As someone with a hobby making software, I can see the need for hiring at some point but I don't even know where to start. Do you just look up one online and call and say "I got a nasty letter, will you be my attorney"? Is there some kind of ongoing subscription cost to keep being "my attorney" or just pay per hour when you have an issue?

> I can see the need for hiring at some point but I don't even know where to start. I have advice for this. Most attorneys, at least in my area, will sit down and talk with you at no charge. My advice is to take advantage of this before you have an actual issue that needs attention and talk with a few of them. Investigate them, talk to their clients if you can, ask about them with professional organizations, etc. And…

This is all good advice.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#118

Post by anticorporate »

NegativeK wrote: post #98
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #36

It's sad that most people are less "legally literate" than they are "scientifically literate", when the former affects them more often throughout life. Schools should teach kids how to not get screwed over with the law. Tenants' rights in particular is very important and almost nobody I know understands them, or how brazenly landlords/management companies will rip you off if you let them.

Most people I see talking about their legal literacy are best described as cocky and dangerous to themselves and others they give advice to. The same behavior shows up with medical literacy. Maybe schooling could help with that.

> Most people I see talking about their legal literacy are best described as cocky and dangerous to themselves and others they give advice to.

100%.

I have a side hustle doing etching, engraving, and CNC-type things. The forums and groups for this kind of things are teeming with people who not just believe, but tell others, that copyright and trademark either don't apply to them for $reasons or doesn't even exist for things they found for "free" on the internet.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#119

Post by dpedu »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #65
hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard about Dealogic so I just Googled -- the title of the click says: > Dealogic: A trusted partner to top financial firms worldwide Oh well, I probably don't need to dig deeper to know what it does then.

At the risk of sounding very dumb — what were you able to determine from that? I have no idea what it means, almost sounds like the mafia Edit: their about page sounds even more mafia-esque. “Dealogic connects banks and investors in the only truly global network… Firms who use Dealogic see results in increased profitability and productivity… Whether you want to analyze wallet share, execute a deal, align operating un…

> what were you able to determine from that

I interpret this as: a company that is successful not because it provides a service that is useful or good, but one that other companies - in this case "financial firms" - are FORCED to buy, usually through compliance or regulatory means.

Think of it like an auto insurance company advertising themselves as "your trusted partner on the roads." Yeah I guess, but it's still meaningless.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#120

Post by denton-scratch »

I used to work for an Indymedia collective; I'd say we received half a dozen C&Ds.

[Indymedia was an open news collective, with a strong anarchist-socialist leaning]

Our "collective" had no formal membership, and no assets. We were all just volunteers who valued the platform and did some work to help out. These emails were always addressed to "To Whom It May Concern". Pseudonymity was the norm in Indymedia, and I was completely ignorant about the IRL identity of most colleagues that preferred to be pseudonymous.

They'd usually be complaining about Indymedia reports of the activities of some small businessman, often a builder. It would often be part of a campaign, i.e. there would be more than one article, by different people. So we'd collate the articles, and do web-searches; if the complaint appeared to refer to something potentially libellous; or involved some crime like inciting violence; or violated our posting T&C, like trolling, conspiraloon, or agent-provocateur, then we'd hide the article or comment; otherwise the site would have been deluged in spam. Hidden articles and comments didn't appear in lists. We had no one-button method for removing an article completely, we had to blank the article in the database. We even published a link to a page where you could view all articles and comments; none of these C&Ds ever referred to a hidden article.

We never replied to any of these C&Ds. We (or I) never hid an article or comment as the result of reading a C&D; I never thought the C&D had any merit. We took the "Ignore" route, and never suffered any adverse consequences; not even follow-ups.

So I don't share the author's opinion that you should never adopt the Ignore route. Perhaps we got lucky, but I'd have taken these messages more seriously if they had named me.

FTR, IANAL.

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